I agree with sword strike being too efficient in mana cost. The other two races have Guillotine and Warrior blow, both are 50 mana+. Humans have the advantage of being by far the best class with mana management (an 8 point investment solves all mana problems), so if anything their spells should cost more. I'm for sword strike being the low mana low damage spell, while charge is the high mana high damage spell. Something like 400% for sword strike and 1300% for charge (brings it up to par with warrior blow). Cooldowns would definitely help things though! This is the issue with mage spells costing 50+ mana and doing 200 damage. Eh, that's it? 2-5% in dota 2 puts you at 4000 mmr. Quite mediocre, 5500 reporting in! Probably top 300 US ez welcome to the 0.1%.
I never bothered playing dota2 heavily. it was almost immediately apparent how big a time commitment it would be to be top tier, and I don't have that kind of time anymore. My roots are back in the early days... in EQ (pvp servers only of course) the guilds my roomie and I ran were always top tier, doing content with 3-10 people that other guilds failed with 30. When guilds of 30 ran stuff we wanted dibs on, we'd kill them and take the spot. with a third of their numbers. so ya, i know what it's like to be on the tippy top, which is why i can't play games like dota2 (i just watch a LOT of it)... if you're not winning it SUCKS. nothing worse than losing because you made mistakes, and it takes a LOT of time to minimize mistakes. Relevancy to H&C2 is this: It's a nice single-player alternative that has a lot of similar features in the online games i know and love, without demanding my soul. I can have a family AND play games. How novel! Now on to skill discussions, since I think that's a grand idea. Obviously all these skills will change, but any extra feedback and info couldn't hurt FM
Like i said i built the character around it so i needed it maxed to deal max damage. 2500 damage in a huge AOE on cast, zero cooldown, infinite source of mana or at least a 160% mana regen on solo sieges. Infinite mana also means infinite invulnerability chains. I can finish Wave30 with only wall units and 3 pathfinders (never needed to summon more) and with ever using normal attack.
Yep, that's the thing about it. There's so many combos you can make to the point that you can't escape being overpowered. At least not quite yet anyway. Remember Veteran with all Clockwork Defenders buffing you in the first game? Ah, those were the days. You can just CHOOSE to be completely broken for a while if you wanted to.
Obviously some of the 1pt wonders are worth putting more points in, but if they're on the list for me, they're worth trying to get at least 1pt in. Elven Skills: 1pt Wonders & must haves for ALL elves Camouflage Critical (if high enough in tree) Brambles (If high) Nimble (omfg broken. Also, mislabeled when trying to upgrade.) Barrage (omgwtfbbq broken. So broken i feel dirty using it. like, insta-win levels of broken) Quickstrike (for melee only it seems? Should work with bows but hard to tell) Heightened Senses (herp derp) Battlefield Awareness Weakspot (sweet!) Greater Weapon Skill Charge (melee skill that ensures bomber gobbo death. debatable worth but i love 1pt) Mana Channel Master Parry (omfg synergy!) Strangle Vines (bow) Root (bow) Medicinal Herbs (absolutely awesome support) Wild Growth (great CC) Bark Armor (1pt wonder) Circle of Protection Elven Arrows (arguable worth. potential there tho.) Wisp Ally: sucks at 1pt. Owns at 5. He does obscene damage if you get captain stacks (they boost him. a lot). Mine hits for 300+ dmg Crap 4th tier GM and Druid skills in general. By and large they're underwhelming for the 35pts it takes to unlock them. ATM my 99 elf (granted he's bow) doesn't have any real reason to dip all the way into either of these trees, and for melee I'd probably spec him all the way into Ranger tree and maybe GM tree but both 4th tier trees could use love imo. Poison tip: garbage. Sniper shot: garbage after you get barrage. Forest Magic: ehhh... it's ok but not for 4th tier. that's a long time not shooting just for that effect. Cleave, Quickstrike, and Offensive Stance: Honorable mention for bow users since none of these seem to work for bows. If they do someone please correct me... I know O-stance doesn't and heard reports from others the other two don't either. Counter Blow: I'm not impressed with block/counter skills. All blocking seems to do is give you 100ARM, which some classes have close to anyways so why bother blocking? Block mechanics need some buffing or counter skills need a buff in order to justify sitting still for that long imo. Only argument for blocking imo is for elves since you usually don't go for ARM with them. Staff Prowess: staves and staff-skills suck for everyone, druid especially. Treeman: 1pt isn't horrible i guess to start a mission off but meh dryads aren't worth the 4cp Forest might: elves with shields suck Sapling: % chance is stupid low for a slowly building buff on a unit that's killable. Completely underwhelming compared to most troop buff abilities, passive or not. Regrowth: A single point in here can ruin your character atm. Nothing is worse than flooding the field with total junk dryads and eating up all your CP. Supposedly fixed in a future patch so summoned dryads don't eat up your 50command units. Dwarf Skills: (haven't tested the rune skills... they seem like bonus damage added late in a build imo) 1pt Wonders and must-haves Dual Wield: if you do get it Rage: destroyer of walls. Adrenaline Rush: whheeeeee!! with a huge freakin' asterisk. Charge: runnin' gobbo killer Warrior Blow: Wall/totem killer. Forge + Rage + this = fast lvl 29 levelin'. Flurry Reckless + Ferocity: 0armor dwarves (which will be most) need these Hatred: +dmg passive. if it works as I think it does, the +dmg calculates before all the percentages making it uber. Might lose value when %dmg skills change over to +dmg skills in the future patch Bloodlust: jeeze Berzerk: Stupidly absurdly broken. You almost have to forego +defense skills to get this to proc properly but it's obscene how survivable this makes you. Feral Instincts Fortify: Great 1pt Advanced Artillery + Stalwart Defense: Arguably the only reason to look at Engineer tree for non-gun-dwarves. imo not worth the points but my dwarf is only 64 atm so dunno if there'll be spare points later... Runic Curse Counter Spell/Magic Channel: magic channel is mandatory, will have to test if counterspell is worth it since it'll lower your heals as well as incoming damage. arguably, you'd want larger heals and larger damage to help proc Berzerk. Forge: great for charging walls. Might hurt more than help otherwise since it'll lower berzerk procs. Great for high armor dwarves since it'll make you nigh unkillable when mixed with Counterspell. Iron Strength: great for DW. Potentially. You'd have to be like lvl 80-85 before it's worth getting tho imo... not worth rushing to. Crap Tradeoff: needs a buff Ice Rune: unless i'm missing something it's extremely underwhelming for a 4th tier skill, unless it procs a crapton of shards... Hammersmith/Hammersmash: great for cheesing lvl 29, worthless otherwise. 2h hammers completely suck. sllooooowww... (capable of huge obscene/broken dmg but pretty horrible to play for normal combat) Shield forge: shield dwarf is fail dwarf. Unless 2h + shield is as broken as people are reporting... Stampede: this looks like a 1-2tier skill to me. only horrible because it's tier 4. +defense skills in general: potentially bad since it stops berzerk procs. buyer beware! Unstoppable: I guess it's a great "uhoh" skill but still seems pretty underwhelming compared to Forge Adrenaline Rush: Yup, both great and horrible. This is the absolute most frustrating skill in the game to me, since i can't imagine living without it but the BLOODY KNOCKING BLAST KNOCKS CRAP AWAY FROM ME ALL THE %^##% TIME!!! why the eff would any melee want enemies knocked back when taking damage... which they do by the nature of being melee!!!! grrr.... Engineer tree in general: I think this is the most one-sided specialty tree in the game, and it suffers for it. I have no reason to dip into it as a melee dwarf, which is odd since humans and elves both have great skills across all three trees. I'd recommend some multiclass use skills in here that would entice melee dwarves to consider spending points in here, instead of all being generic Berzerker/Runesmith dwarves Human Skills: (Note: my lowest hero... i've tested most of these but some I haven't so if they don't work as intended I apologize) 1pt Wonders First Strike (seems to work the vast majority of the time) Adrenaline Juggernaut Divine Intervention Holy Vengeance (ONLY 1pt, to try to give yourself magic attk when you need it, but not for TOO long) Trauma Blessed Holy Light Holy Shield Resolute Vengeance Aura Arcane Magic Arguably Mana/Mana Marker. I dunno high end humans well enough to know if it's worth going into mage tree to invest the 6+ points in for mana resources. Crap Everything Mage tree past mana marker. It has more utility/multiclass use for humans than Engineer does for dwarves but the actual MAGE components are pretty garbage imo. Like summoners, they exist for "funsies" atm. Holy punishment: 15% of nothing is nothing. skill in great need of the change to +dmg. Smite: i HATE knocking back enemies when I'm melee. why the hell would i want to do that? Rush: same as smite. Potentially useful later on for mage when mage doesn't suck? Counter Attack: blocking sucks. Shield Prowess: same Revenge: arguable. If you're getting attacked in the back i guess this could be useful but i'd still prefer stuff near me for Sword Striking. Valiant Charge: horrible mana cost compared to SS.
Those are the standouts for me. There's a lot of great skills, a number of completely brokenly OP ones, and a number of utter trash ones. Out of everything I would want looked at, Adrenaline Rush is the standout for me after all the OP skills and the necessary %dmg->+dmg changes. Please oh freakin' PLEASE take the knockback component off of it. I'm sure berzerk will get nerfed so this'll become a larger problem as time goes on. I know what you were trying for here FM but holy crap it's just HORRIBLE for melee dwarves... great for gun dwarves but man, just horrible for melee. Did i say horrible enough? HORRIBLE.
I disagree a bit with your dwarf assessment. I think defense is perfectly fine on dwarves. It's usually the burst hits that trigger adrenaline rush/berzerk, not the steady stream of regular attacks. Basically, you soften the blows that won't be triggering berzerk anyway, while still being able to trigger berzerk just like a lower defense dwarf when the time comes. Triggering berzerk is good, but I've found it's actually rather difficult to sustain indefinitely off Bloodlust alone. Having a few points in passive defense skills allows me to stay out there much longer. Berzerk/AR are temporary buffs after all; you've got to kill 12 things on average to make up the 100 HP loss. Of course, if you run vampirism on top of this, then it might be ok. The only viable DPSing human build later on would be Sword Strike spamming, your normal attacks are pitiful compared to the other two classes. You have a plethora of skills that buff your units though, and you can sustain them indefinitely. 8 points in mage is absolutely mandatory for every human. On that note, it'd also make a lot more sense to separate 1 point skills from MUST MAX, as they are two completely different concepts. 1 point skill implies it's a poor scaling skill. Grouping them doesn't make any sense to me.
Ya I agree I just got lazy with grouping. Spent more time on it then I planned and don't really plan on spending more time on it with a huge rebalance coming very shortly. I'll defer to you on dwarf since mine is like 72 now and i refuse to do survival (or beat lvl 30) until the patch comes in. I HAVE noticed that little attacks, even clustered, don't seem to trigger berzerk. I'd have to fiddle with it more and test it a bunch, but either way defense would probably give you more mileage in survival. There's just not much to test it on atm since siege fights last about 10-20s and there's only the rare defense map to fight on. And those I can't see past my blinding rage for the mobs rushing me only to get blasted back for no dmg from adr. rush.
It's been over a week already at this point, about 9-10 days if I count this right. Yet, updates for Block Fortress and OAC hit and BF took a week, and OAC's update only took four days.
@Cronk: for humans, mage's Mana Marker at lv3 is bordering OP. In endless, there are ALWAYS groups of ghouls, goblins, or skeletons and at least one of them will have the mark. You basically get a lot more mana than you spent when you kill marked ones (even just one) when using Sword Strike which can make arcane magic a bit more just for backup coz you will always have mana just killing things. Even marked monsters with physical resistance like wraiths give you tons of mana if hit by either ice mages or elven snipers especially since you didnt spend any to kill that. Mana Regen is not recommended coz you dont have time to stand around to regen when you can either get mana from the mark, or from arcane. Im actually waitig for the patch to take advantage of the 30-gem reset. So my recommendation for the mage tree for the Sword Strike build is 3 for arcane magic, 2 for the +mana, and 3 for the Mana Marker. More points into +Mana isnt a bad idea either, but you'd already have enough mana when you get to higher levels. At first i only had 1 point in it so i could check how helpful the mana regen would be, but it proved itself pretty useful at lv1. Endless mode makes it THE mana source for the humans. We'll see how Foursaken balances out the human trees when the patch hits, and how the future patches could affect the build.
Cool thanks for the info man! Humans are the class I know the least since I found SS spam kinda boring. Definitely powerful, but boring. I figured there were good mana options in Mage tree just didn't know how well stuff like Mark actually worked. Too bad the tree largely sucks... Hopefully it gets some love... Id like to try a Mage!
The Mage's fixed spell damage is the main reason the tree isnt as good as the other classes available for Human, but at least it can hold on its own in completing the 30 waves. If it scales with his weapon or even mana, hell even the number of points spent into the mage tree, he could be more viable endgame at very high levels.
Ya that was my turnoff. Fixed damage spells are just bleh. There needs to be scaling or they get left behind. Honestly the other turnoff for me is the mana menu. It's just... Clunky. Hard to wanna play a Mage when you have to go into the menu every time you want to cast a spell. I don't see an option but it's pretty sucko.
I think an option to "hotkey" spells would be quite nice. ie on-screen buttons for your 2 most casted spells. Maybe you can also set 2 "fave" unit icons in addition to the default bannerman for quick summoning.
But there are 3 icons which show the most recent summoned unit (4 icons if you're on a larger screen, apparently). What do you mean mean with "default" bannerman? Did you mean that your "hotbar" should be filled at the start of each battle already? I don't see a need for that... Definitely agree with the spells though. As I mentioned before, the pauses really take you out of the game. Plus it's really weird and unfriendly using range spells this way.
Yeah, it should be filled at the start already with Bannerman + 3 of your choosing. On another note, will be getting another $20 pack this friday to gamble some shields!
Beat the game yesterday (today at 3 am). I'm pretty sure the townsfolk are supposed to have lines when you beat wave 30 that are different from the lines they say once you Spoiler "destroy" the crystal and beat Noter Kah. Because even before you go to Scarwood the people will spoil it and tell you Spoiler that Noter Kah and the Crystal have been destroyed. Not sure why I wrapped this into spoilers, since it's pretty obvious what's going to happen there since wave 25... Pretty disappointed in Noter Kah's appearance. Was expecting something more epic and not just a Spoiler a big version of a necromancer . The ending isn't as epic as it should be. Atmosphere- and story-wise. It's quite anti-climactic. The Crystal should've blown up, the hero absorb his power and the King should come out all worn out from the Keep. Or at least any of the 3 things. Or at least something. A camera panning across the lands and text that you helped to save the people... Anything. The obelisk missions were pretty cool though, wasn't expecting any new battle modes, even tough it's not all that different. Also, the enemy units in the bestiary all show as being level 5 now. Does anyone know how the enemy units scale in level trough the game? Time to reload that wave 29 save file and farm some crystals.
I didn't even read all the lines and missed a lot of the story line. Since you cannot replay the campaign (just the waves), it's not possible anymore to get the story... Not very good but probably my own fault. I didn't even noticed that the first time, perhaps you noticed it right away because you write articles for the wiki and already knew a lot about units when you finally beat the game. But I did notice that in the campaign mission he appeared inside his castle but couldn't get out. When I replay the mission, he spawns outside. Maybe a bug. What I really didn't like was the message "You will need several high level Heroes". Excitement at first, but then "no, I don't". My poorly equipped level 3x Paladin was enough. The final siege needs to get harder and more epic. 30 trolls for example. ;-)
